Your university degree might be useless

Experts say the future of the traditional degree structure is limited, but does that mean your current university degree may be useless?

Is getting a degree worth the time and money? Picture: iStockSource:istock

A controversial Christian blogger has sparked backlash on Twitter for saying women should not go to university because it “does nothing to prepare them for being wives and mothers”.

Mother-of-four Lori Alexander, who goes by the name The Transformed Wife and describes herself as “a keeper at home” who “loves Jesus”, argued that university simply leaves women deeply in debt and exposes them to “feminist teachings”.

“No, I am not a huge fan of college for women,” Ms Alexander wrote on Saturday. “College’s purpose is to prepare them for careers while making them go deeply into debt and does NOTHING to prepare them for being wives and mothers.”

In response to one user agreeing that it was “not worth the debt”, she wrote, “Nor the exposure to feminist and humanistic teachings which draws them farther from the ways of the Lord.”

No, I am not a huge fan of college for women. College’s purpose is to prepare them for careers while making them go deeply into debt and does NOTHING to prepare them for being wives and mothers.

The conservative US blogger later added, “Women are repulsed by the idea of serving their husbands yet a ‘borrower is servant to the lender’ (Pr 22:7). Women owe two-thirds of the $US1.3 trillion student loan debt. Women willingly serve their lenders (having to get jobs to pay back their loans) rather than their husbands.”

The average government-supported university student in Australia has debt of $20,300 and takes 8.9 years to pay it down. In the US the average student debt is $53,758 ($US37,172) and time to pay is 10 to 23 years.

The tweet attracted more than 5700 replies and 300 retweets. In Twitter parlance, being “ratioed” indicates widespread dislike, as it indicates far more people are jumping in to disagree than retweeting the original message.

“This may be the stupidest tweet in the history of the world,” sports writer Monte Perez wrote. “An educated woman is a better human being. Therefore if she chooses to marry or have kids. She will be better off. Her husband and kids will be better off. The 1850s called they want their hairstyle and philosophy back.”

Author Lynne Schlumpf wrote, “I’ve got to tell you something my father taught me. You probably won’t care, but maybe some young woman will. ‘You need to learn to find your own way, stand on your own two feet. Because men die. They grow tired and find another. They get hurt and can’t work. They’re human.’”

Victor Stoddard wrote, “Making a baby is easy. Getting married is easy. But getting a good education isn’t easy. Education is for those who are determined to improve their lives. “Education increases incomes and raised their standard of living. Education doesn’t preclude women from having children.”

Ms Alexander, who has 98,000 followers on Facebook, regularly upsets the internet with her “teaching blog” which she says is “a home for like-minded women whose only desire is to live out God’s perfect ways”.